


been spendin' all these summers with you

by bonebreak



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, An Excessive Amount of Em Dashes, Denial of Feelings, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Kissing, M/M, Secret Relationship, Summer Romance, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-09 11:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebreak/pseuds/bonebreak
Summary: Yes! Todaysummer camp is home to many things: pre-teen rascals who can't stop doing trend dances, way too many marshmallows, the greatest pranks of all time, and the never-ending rivalry of Wong Yukhei and Lee Donghyuck.Or, the summer it all turns around.





	been spendin' all these summers with you

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to whoever prompted this because it spoke to me the moment i read it
> 
> and to camp for giving me everything i needed for this
> 
> and to the enrara mods for putting this amazing fest together and for putting up with my chronic tardiness when it came to everything
> 
> and to _r_ for being the most thorough and honest beta ever, even if you only ended up helping with the beginning
> 
> and to _a_ who let me talk about this fic for hours over bubble tea and ft so i could, not only vent about how stuck i was, but get myself out of blocks
> 
> (mostly) unbetaed

Yukhei knows this isn’t a competition.

He’s not really the competitive type. He is here for one sole purpose—well, actually three main purposes.

  * The environment
  * The children
  * The pay



While they may seem like reasons someone would pull out of their ass to sound like a good person, save for the last, he’s being completely sincere.

1\. The environment is good for him.

Yukhei always liked the outdoors. He likes being in the sun, sweating and moving. The moving makes him feel like he’s fulfilling a purpose, the sweat he wipes from his brow makes it all worth it. The fresh air the forest provides is a luxury he wouldn’t think of passing up in a million years, especially when the air back home suffocates him. 

His mother approves too. Often says it’s good he’s putting his time towards a rightful cause, that he’s a good role model. He wouldn’t outwardly disagree, but it makes him all flustered.

2\. The children need him.

They don’t need him specifically, but they need someone. If he happens to be that someone, it’s a win-win. He likes the kids. They’re fun and they make him feel like he’s not a complete outsider. 

Yukhei is often told that he’s childish, goofy, silly. It’s a mask, mostly; a defense mechanism. Looking through the world with naivety isn’t ideal, but it keeps him grounded. People get frustrated with him, with his consistent joking tone and his too-easy smiles. They want to watch him crack. He doesn’t let it get to him.

The childlike innocence his friends see in him is something he can easily recognize in the kids at camp, but he doesn’t believe that he possesses any of children’s vulnerability, purity, and utter chaos. Throughout the years, he’s grown to really love the kids. He likes hearing that they missed him since they saw him last summer, and how they hoped he would still be there for the summers to come. Little do the children know that he would always come back, but he doesn't know what he would do when they stopped coming.

3\. The pay is rather nice.

It seems like a shallow reason, but if it weren’t true, Yukhei wouldn’t think about it. Often times, he finds himself in tough situations, like breaking up a petty feud over the last piece of the nice origami paper or cleaning up a kid’s vomit after mystery meatloaf night and wills his way through it after reminding himself of the hefty paycheck he will be receiving in the mail once the summer is over. 

Despite these being the only real reasons, Yukhei hasn’t completely given up, there is an underlying rationale that can’t help but manifest into his foremost thoughts, from the depths of his mind. He doesn’t suppress it—at least not consciously. However, he will admit that the thought makes his stomach churn and his face a little hot. 

Right now, he’s found himself in the same state. He’s a little sweatier, and his hands are turning red too.

The volleyball arches in the air in slow motion. Yukhei can practically see the pattern in which it will fall. He isn’t just running, he’s pushing the earth with the soles of his feet. It only takes three quick strides of his long legs to get to where he’s sure the ball will land, while his hands are already positioned in front of him ready to receive it. His heart beats so rapidly, he thinks it could fly right out of his throat, so he gulps just before the ball is about to make contact with his skin. He blinks right when it happens. He hears the smack of a hand hitting the ball, but he doesn’t feel the leather against his own. Instead, the momentum of his speed combined with the abrupt stopping of his feet continues to move him until he’s on the hard dirt and seeing the world sideways. He watches the ball touch down on the other side of the net. 

“Nice save!” he hears a kid scream from what he knows is somewhere behind him, not because he can tell where any sounds are coming from, but because he knows where this particular kid was standing.

The words are not directed at him. Neither are the other shouts of astonishment and awe. Frustration bubbles up inside him as he pushes himself off from the ground. He’s pretty sure he scraped an elbow on the way down. It stings.

He spots the familiar head of brown hair turned away from him, basking in praise from a crowd of kids who stare up at him with twinkling eyes. The sight of him makes Yukhei fume just a little more, but he takes a steadying breath. This is civil. He is civil. Not a competition.

“Nice save,” he parrots the previous kid. The head turns to him and sends him a smile, all teeth and no feeling, unless the feeling was pure haught. 

The brown haired _ball thief_ opens his mouth to respond, or retort, or gloat—Yukhei doesn’t care—but he beats him to it. “I had that one, though.”

The other boy barks a laugh because all he seemed to know how to do is bark. “If you had it, I wouldn’t have had to get it, right?” He snickered at his own point and smiles at Yukhei again. “Let’s not be fussy. We’re on the same team after all. Good game.”

Yukhei isn’t really sure if they are. Despite the same dulled out forest green bandanas they sport around their heads, he’s sure the other boy is plotting his demise, same team or not. 

It is most definitely a competition.

☼

When Yukhei first started working summers at Yes! Today co-ed summer camp, he was assigned to cabins 4 and 5. The staff was humble then, only two supervising staff and a handful of fresh faced counselors who didn’t know what the hell they were doing (except for Yangyang who acted so much like he was a 10 year old, it came naturally to him). He was one of five counselors tasked with juggling two cabins of middle schoolers each. 

It was rough for a newbie. Yukhei wasn’t good at knowing what kids needed, or even how needy kids were to begin with, but fortunately he was quick to adjust. It was in his good fortune that he was goofy enough that kids genuinely liked being around him and just responsible enough to make sure none of them got injured in the process of having fun.

Somewhere along the way during that first summer, he found himself having fun too—and it may or may not have had something to do with the fact his cabins often reminded him that he was their most “favoritest” counselor. (Their words, not his. He’s a people pleaser, and when his people are pleased, he believes he should be allowed a little pride.) When he came back the next summer, the staff had expanded. Doyoung and Taeyong had done some recruiting and brought with them two boys the same age as Yangyang and a girl in Yukhei’s grade. 

Yukhei and Katy Kim got along at once. She was bright, took nobody’s shit and the kids adored her. From his first impression of the smaller girl, Yukhei wasn’t sure if he admired her or was terrified of her. After a summer of working with her and keeping in touch throughout the past school year—mostly her gossiping about people he didn’t know and gushing over her crushes he would never be acquainted with—he still wasn’t sure.

He spots her now on the way to the nurse’s quarters for antibacterial spray. If there was one thing he really was terrified of, it was infection. 

“Sick scrape!” she teases before eying the wound with disgust right after. “How’d you get that?”

He looks down at the wound himself and understands the grimace on her face. There’s a thin trickle of blood coming from it, mixed with the grime from the ground. The blood makes it glisten and he feels it throb. Sick indeed. 

“Haechan,” is all he says in response and grimaces himself. The name comes out in a near growl. She seems to paint the picture on her own and has to stifle a laugh. Katy has no problem with the other boy, in fact they had been rather close from the very beginning, having joined at the same time. They bonded over mixing kids’ names up and getting lost in the woods.

“Knowing you, it was probably your fault,” she snickers into her palm. Though Yukhei didn’t have an issue with her and Haechan being buddies, he did find it rather irritating that she takes his side in their feuding. 

“I had it!” he argues back. He knows Katy doesn’t understand the statement without context, but she laughs at him regardless. She’s always considerate like that.

“Sure you did.” He takes it back. 

The nurse’s quarters is one of five buildings in the central area of the camp. The other three are the staff quarters, the dining hall, the amphitheater and the shower house, the cabin area being further down a trail that split off in front of the shower house. Katy had split off to go to the amphitheater—something about the campfire finally being lit and banana boats. The front door to the building is adorned with a white sign a familiar red cross painted onto it. The sign beside the door reads unoccupied, so he doesn’t knock before entering. He and the nurse are on a first name basis. 

“Yukhei,” the man says in greeting as he looks up from his desk. His tone is neither surprised or disappointed, just a neutral something in between. He might have seen the activity schedule. Maybe he had been expecting Yukhei to walk in that afternoon. 

“I just need some antibacterial spray—maybe a bandage,” is all he offers in place of a proper explanation for his appearance in the office. Johnny hands him a bottle without further questioning and goes back to whatever paperwork he had been looking over before Yukhei had walked in. 

“I’m not gonna pry, but if it was Haechan, it’s because he’s been having trouble sleeping. Take it easy on him,” Johnny voices without even looking up. The entire site knew of their rivalry—it’s actually rather embarrassing for Yukhei to be so known for being caught up in a silly feud. Yukhei wants to be snarky and ask if revealing that information was a breach of privacy, but he decides against it. Instead he lets the words sink in. 

Trouble sleeping? That was new. He supposes that he had heard more tossing and turning in their cabin than usual. He had initially thought it was Yangyang; he’s rather restless due to all the caffeine he insists on consuming throughout the day. 

The sting of the antibacterial spray doing its magic reels his thoughts back. He hisses as the wound sizzles. Once he’s patched himself up, he hears the familiar chime of the dinner bell. Johnny shoos him out of his quarters, insisting that Yukhei stuff himself full to get healing faster. That’s definitely not something taught in nursing school, but he doesn’t question it. He has no qualms about eating.

He makes his way over to the dining hall, both excited to start shoveling food into his face and to catch up with the rest of the counselors. He knew Yangyang was assigned to origami that morning and he had an ongoing bet with Choerry about how many paper cuts he would have by the end of the day. 

Kids are already flooding into the building from all angles. Yukhei knows better than to try and push through the front doors even if he could easily shove a few rowdy kids aside to get to the front; he loops around to the back doors instead, leading him straight into the bustling kitchen. His olfactory is invaded immediately and he sighs into the scent of something delicious smelling. It must be brownies for dessert.

“I can’t keep telling you that you can’t be back here, Lucas,” calls a muffled voice from the pantry. 

Yukhei grins at the warning, squeezing in between the cooks who glare at him, and grabs a fresh dinner roll from a cooling rack on his way out the door leading into the main hall. 

The dining hall is one of Yukhei’s favorite buildings in the camp, having mostly to do with the food and partially to do with how much personality the space has. Furniture is arranged in a way Taeyong would call fun and what Doyoung would call chaos. There are chairs and tables of all different shapes and sizes, mixed and matched and thrown together haphazardly. Along the far wall that is covered in colorful handprints and splatter marks from a project last summer are two buffet tables and three windows that lead to the kitchen. Yukhei appears just beside these windows and is almost immediately run over by a kid nearly his height. 

“Woah, slow down. There’s enough chicken pot pie to go around,” he laughs with a steadying hand on the kid’s shoulder. 

“Sorry Lucas!” he squeaks. “I wanted to get them while they were still warm.” The orange haired boy doesn’t even bother looking up from his plate as he explains.

“Jisung, you know it’s only one for the first trip,” Yukhei reminds sternly. The boy has shoved two of the miniature pies onto his plate alongside an absolute mountain of potato wedges. Not a green vegetable in sight. 

“It’s for Haechan,” he says quickly before grabbing two spoons, ducking under Yukhei’s arm and scurrying towards the only circular table in the space where most of the counselors had taken seats at. Yukhei watches and furrows his brow as one of the pies is slid onto the table in front of Haechan. Haechan’s hand comes up to ruffle Jisung’s hair. He was even sitting in Yukhei’s spot.

This was his plan all along, Yukhei realizes, to send Yukhei to the nurse so he could take his seat in his absence. _The menace._

There are certain moral codes that Yukhei has in order to keep himself sane as well as non-detestable in his own eyes. At the very top of the list of these codes is one he holds dear to his heart; do not take advantage of a child’s good nature. This rule is never broken. Another code to regard is to not judge others. This rule is broken often.

He shoves half the dinner roll into his mouth and grabs his own pie before striding towards the table. He pulls out the last remaining seat at the table, a barstool painted bright green. Yangyang and Olivia are on either side of him sitting on a classroom chair with tennis balls on the legs and a creaky rolling computer chair respectively. Once he’s seated, he can’t help but scowl. He directs this straight ahead (and a little downward) where Haechan is looking at him with an unabashed grin. Yukhei sees how the other boy’s eyes trail down to his bandage over his elbow and almost thinks he sees something like worry flicker in his expression, but it’s gone so fast he dismisses it. 

“Looking mighty tall, Lucas,” he observes aloud. The entire table snickers. 

Yukhei’s already lanky self is usually hard to overlook enough on its own. However, when he’s not in his usual seat—a funky looking chair colored neon fushia in the shape of a hand—and instead on a tall stool, he is a sight to behold as he towers over everyone else at the table. He feels like an overgrown baby in a booster seat.

“How’s the weather up there?” cracks a smirking Yangyang. Yukhei was _so_ sneaking earthworms into his clothes tonight. As for the culprit who stole his chair in the first place? He was getting centipedes. 

☼

Yukhei is by no means petty. He’s easygoing, laid back and he has this whole thing about confrontation (he hates it). He’s not into elaborate revenge schemes or going out of his own way to make someone else feel crappy, even if it so happens that that person made him feel crappy first. It’s just not his thing. The rest of the counselors would agree with him on the topic. They’re all about teaching the campers about peaceful conflict resolution—talking it out and all that good stuff kids need to be learning in order to be high functioning adults in today’s society. 

However, when it comes to counselor-to-counselor interaction, the general consensus is that they will all do whatever it takes to act on their vengeances toward one another. Taeyong is vocal about his distaste towards such childish antics and what if someone were to get hurt? Doyoung’s not openly supportive or opposed, but the staff all know he was in on the chocolate syrup incident of last summer that had a counselor smelling like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for a month. (Who else would they have gotten that much chocolate from?) Yukhei still can’t decide whether the actual act of chocolate syrup pouring or the increase of bug bites due to the sickeningly sweet smell were the worst parts of the scheme. 

Pranks are taken seriously at Yes! Today. 

Which is exactly why, as the kids are washing up and getting into their bunks, Yukhei sneaks off into the forested area behind the cabins with a snickering Snoopy who he has to shush every few minutes for warding away their prey. 

Their footsteps are cushioned by a layer of pine needles blanketing the forest floor. Though more than once a needle finds its way piercing into the sole of Yukhei’s foot, causing him to almost yelp out in pain. He can’t stop Snoopy from laughing at him for it when he was the one who had come out in sandals.

Snoopy ends up finding one of the stinkers first, almost screeching when he spots it wriggling around on the ground and compromising the entire operation, but Yukhei clamps a hand over his mouth just in time and they walk back to the cabin area with a shoebox full of dirt and some new friends.

☼

Truthfully, Yukhei and Haechan don’t cross paths often. Their daily schedules are hardly intersect and their cabins are 4 and 5, meaning Yukhei is almost always paired up with Lip in cabin 3 and Haechan is paired with Nana in the 6th for any related team activities. 

In spite of this, Yukhei finds himself running into Haechan more than enough times throughout the course of his days. Whether it be because the shorter boy happened to be walking past the Gaga Ball pit to distract Yukhei, ending in a ball straight into Yukhei’s unsuspecting crotch, or tripping Yukhei on his way to the lake as Haechan walks in the opposite direction, whatever kid’s lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the embarrassment Yukhei is being subjected to get a hoot out of it. 

It’s a game they play. Except the game has gone past mindless fun and pointless victories. Their competition has been deeper than that since Haechan snuck wasabi into a batch of batter of his and Chenle’s favorite muffins. That morning he and his camper (not favorite because no one should be able to choose a favorite kid, but admittedly Chenle was higher up on his metaphorical list) had been bouncing-off-the-walls excited for breakfast, only to bite into the warm pastry and swallow a mouthful of fire. This may or may not be the reason why part time counselors are no longer allowed in the kitchen until after dinner.

Essentially, they are constantly at war with one another. Which is why today Yukhei wakes up to a shrill scream, soon accompanied by another of similar pitch. 

There is an unnervingly familiar thud of a body hitting the wood floors (unnerving _because_ it is familiar) followed by the hasty unzipping of a sleeping bag. The screaming continues as Yukhei finally cracks open a crusty eye and sees Haechan squirming and jumping around the main floor of the cabin. Yangyang is yelling while he writhes about on the ground still in his bright green sleeping bag, looking like a glorified inch worm.. 

“Seriously? A centipede?” Haechan screams once the critter has fallen from where it resided in the inside of his shirt and landed on the ground before him. He shivers and tiptoes around it back to the safety of his bunk, his sleeping bag empty and still discarded on the cabin floor. 

The rest of the cabin has started huffing and grumbling once they realize what had awoken them in the first place. There’s still a good half hour before they’re all supposed to be awake and setting up for the day. 

Nana is the first to zip his sleeping bag up completely to the top and go back to sleep. Yukhei can hear Snoopy suppressing his laughter from above him and he attempts the same. He rolls over so that his back is facing the rest of the cabin despite knowing Haechan will figure out he’s the culprit whether he gets caught laughing at him or not. 

☼

Yukhei’s first impression of Haechan was actually rather positive. He had appeared on the first day of orientation bright eyed and eager to hang out with the campers.

Haechan was good with kids, he understood them. Whether it had to do with the fact that he had four younger siblings he was tasked with taking care of back at his home, he learned quick and was always willing to do whatever Taeyong or Doyoung asked of him. He was admirable in that sense.

Haechan ended up taking over cabin 5, leaving Yukhei to keep on taking care of cabin 4. He remembers how quickly the boy had gotten along with the cabin despite being a new face and looked to him in awe. It had taken Yukhei at least a week for any of the kids to even ask him to use the bathroom. 

But Haechan is possibly the most capable human being he could have ever met and he made his cabin fall for his charms in just two short hours.

He remembers how Haechan had introduced himself loudly and clearly, so sure of himself and so ready to take on whatever the world had to offer. He remembers how when he was in Haechan’s exact same spot, he had shrunk himself down and been so terrified of meeting the rest of the staff and making a good impression that he hadn’t even realised it was his turn to speak and somebody else had to nudge him back into the real world and out of his abyss of a mind. 

Admittedly, Yukhei is a hard nut to crack. It takes careful precision to open his shell without harming any of the contents inside. Sure, he was easygoing and decent to make small talk with, but his mask felt disingenuous to those around him no matter what he did. Maybe it’s just hardwired human nature to want to dig deeper, to learn secrets, to know weaknesses. His friends back home know better than anyone how guarded he is despite his outward goofy fun-loving-ness. They know better than anyone that they’re better off just leaving him be, that Yukhei is firm in not letting people know his fears and keeping them out of his thoughts.

But Haechan isn’t like Yukhei. He’s a sharer—dare he say, an _oversharer_. In just five minutes of being in his presence, Yukhei had learned Haechan was the eldest brother to a widowed mother, had issues with authority and hadn’t actually known how to ride a two-wheeled bike until grade 9.

Which is most of why he is so fascinated with the boy. When Haechan has an issue, he’s transparent as glass. Yukhei is more like a painted tile on a wall of a crumbling building, painted only to distract from the real problems. 

He’s drawn to Haechan, almost. Drawn to the way he is outspoken and carefree, how he is confident in others knowing his weaknesses and knowing that only he himself could take advantage of said weaknesses. And Yukhei’s never seen Haechan break down before. Yukhei is pretty sure Haechan would much sooner eat dirt than give up on something or fail to succeed spectacularly.

Things are weirdly tense between them now, though. Yukhei isn’t sure whether to attribute that to the not-so-friendly competition or not.

☼

If there’s one thing Yukhei knows the collective of counselors at Yes! Today know how to do, it’s gossip. When they’re out in the woods with nothing but a few hundred children and barely any cellular reception, they learn quickly that the best way to satisfy their innate craving for social interaction is each other. Which is fine since they’re all friendly and it’s being buddy-buddy with the people working alongside him and living with him has its benefits.

Everybody knows that the best time for gossiping is after lights out and just before their meetings.

Meetings are split up; counselors on a duty such as wake ups, food prep, or set up are allowed to go to sleep early while the counselors off any duties meet. They’re held after dark every other week on Fridays, mostly for planning, but once the nitty gritty is done and over with, they’re all released to hang out until the clock struck midnight. 

Tonight they had planned out the following week’s activities schedule and worked out recreation assignments before being released. 

“A kid thought we were dating today,” Snoopy tells Nana as they sit around a table drinking italian sodas. Snoopy has a glass of strawberry lemonade.

Nana pushes away his pina colada before he gives him a hearty chuckle. “As if. I would never date you.”

Snoopy feigns offense, clutching a hand to his chest as he gasps. “Who the hell would you date if not me?”

“I tell you who _I’d_ date,” Choerry interjects, wedging herself in between the two, the ice of her grape soda clinking against the glass. 

“We already know it’s Olivia. Not like you don’t make that clear as day to us and everybody else,” Yangyang snickers into his marionberry. Choerry flushes a bright red and goes quiet.

“Who _would_ you date, Nana?” Lip prods, lips around her cherry red straw, matching the color of her raspberry soda.

“Who else but Hendery in cabin 10?” There are a few nods in agreement. “What about you, Lucas?”

Yukhei had definitely been spacing out and watching the lethargic climb of a banana slug up the wall. The trail of goo it leaves behind is shimmering. His soda is almost untouched. He had been convinced (more like peer pressured) by the rest of the group to try the banana flavor, which was neon yellow and sickeningly syrupy, no matter how much club soda he watered it down with. 

“Huh?”

“Who would you want to date out of all the counselors?” Lip reiterates. 

If he was being honest, he doesn’t think he could date any of them. He runs through his options. Cabin 1 is Nana, a total flirt and defined heartthrob—Yukhei wasn’t into heartbreakers. Cabin 2 is lead by Choerry who is more of a little sister to him than anything else, the same goes for Olivia in cabin 9 and Hendery who’s nothing more than a friend. Lip reminds him too much of his mom and Snoopy is entirely too chaotic. Yangyang he considers for a brief moment before cringing.

The rest of the staff are on duty tonight and he’s not close enough to any of them to be able to judge and not feel entirely guilty for talking about while they aren’t present. There’s only one counselor left on his mind, one his mind tries its hardest to avoid thinking about.

“No one. I wouldn’t date anyone,” Yukhei says finally.

The rest of the group groans and calls him boring. Yangyang gives him a look.

☼

Yukhei isn’t properly equipped to deal with this. He’s good at cheering kids up and doing Fortnite dances. He’s known for how he can grip a basketball in one hand and holding the camp record for eating the most lemon bars in one sitting. He’s not as touchy-feely. He might as well be allergic to emotional confrontations. 

He was excited to go retrieve his cabin. Tonight was the talent show and Yukhei promised Hyunjin in cabin 8 he would play the guitar for him to sing along with.

Ordinarily, cabin 4 are a group of well behaved kids, albeit a little loud at times. They’re a strange bunch, ten middle schoolers who find too much enjoyment in mocking Yukhei’s every move. He likes to think it’s their own special way of telling him they look up to him.

Yukhei jogged up the front steps and didn’t bother knocking before he swung the door open.

He had waltzed into a complete nightmare.

There were three boys crouched over another who laid on the ground crying, another shouting at the crying one. Two of his kids are watching from an upper bunk. The rest of his kids aren’t even in the cabin. 

He’s frozen for a moment as he takes everything in. Then he takes action.

Crouching down, he sees that the crying boy is red faced and gasping for breath. He was having some sort of panic attack. He asks the others hovering around him to give him some space, and firmly suggests the one shouting _knock it off_. 

Seokhwa is known for being the crybaby of the bunch. He was one of the only ones who had cried on the bus ride back home last year, and always ends up bawling on Yukhei’s shoulder during Disney movie nights, regardless of the selection. This is different from Disney related sadness.

“Seokhwa,” he calls to him softly. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

The boy chokes as he tries to speak through sobs, but nothing but garble comes out.

“I need you to sit up, buddy. I can’t understand you when you’re breathing like that,” Yukhei says very slowly. He racks his brain trying to find every single breathing exercise and method for calming down an escalated child he’s ever learned. But he’s blanking and Seokhwa is still sobbing so hard he can’t see straight and Yukhei is honestly panicking.

There’s a gentle rapping at the door and he dutifully ignores it in favor of the task at hand. Yukhei hears one of his kids tell whoever’s there what’s happening. When Yukhei finally turns to look at who it is, he’s hoping it’s Doyoung or Taeyong who have had years more of child management under their belts and would most definitely know how to handle this more effectively.

Instead, it’s Haechan.

The boy doesn’t hesitate to head straight for the distressed Seokhwa as soon as he spots him. He lowers himself to his level and Yukhei gives him some more space. 

“Seokhwa,” Haechan says steadily. “I need you to breathe with me, alright? Look at me. In for four, hold for seven and eight out. Together.” 

They sit there and breathe for a while, until Seokhwa isn’t blubbering anymore and he’s coherent enough to wipe his own tears. The shouting boy, Lin, is frowning while he paces the main area of the cabin and muttering under his breath. Yukhei is frozen as he watches it all happen.

“Lucas,” Haechan calls. “You should take the rest of your cabin down to the amphitheatre.” His expression is unreadable, but his tone is stern. He’s offering Yukhei an escape. Yukhei wonders how stricken his own expression must be.

He nods at the suggestion and gathers up the rest of his kids. 

On the way down to the amphitheatre, a few of his kids start to spill about what had happened.

Jisung tells him that Minseo had been touching Seokhwa’s things; Yujin mentions Seokhwa had started yelling first; Hwan narrates how Seokhwa wasn’t able to breathe under Lee’s headlock, which had triggered his panic.

Yukhei’s head feels like it’s drowning in a vat of oil. He doesn’t know how to deal with violence or kids crying or kids fighting. Conflict resolution has never been his strong point. He’ll most definitely have to fill out an incident report with Doyoung for something as serious as this. He feels bad for Haechan, who was forced to take over in that situation. He feels bad for not being able to handle it himself.

Throughout the talent show, his mind races and worry takes on the form of repeatedly looking around to see if his campers and Haechan would finally make an appearance, or if they would make an appearance at all. He wonders what they could be doing back at the cabin.

It’s finally Hyunjin’s turn to sing. He sits on the stage and Yukhei follows with his guitar and he has to shake his head to knock himself back into camp mode. He has to trust Haechan and that he will fix things.

They never show up to the talent show, which is a shame considering how excited the both of them had been for it. He thinks Haechan had signed up for it too. 

Later that night when he’s wrangling all his kids to their bunks, he’s pleasantly surprised to find Minseo and Seokhwa talking amongst themselves like nothing’s happened. They even joke around so much Yukhei has to remind them it’s bed time and they begrudgingly head to their own bunks. He thinks he might be going crazy, that maybe the incident hadn’t actually happened at all. The two hadn’t even been this close before it all.

After brushing his teeth, Yukhei finds Haechan outside the bathroom and pulls him aside.

“What are you? A wizard?” he starts questioning. Haechan’s expression is entirely confused. 

“These kids hold grudges longer than they hold the urge to pee just cause they all have hardcore FOMO. And now they just make up and are best friends cause you talked them into it? Did you bribe them?” Yukhei interrogates, taking Haechan’s hands in his own like a lifeline.

“Hell no, I did not bribe them. Who do you think I am?” Haechan scowls.

“Then how did you do that?”

“I’m just…” he pauses to figure out the phrasing. “I’m good with them—the kids. Good at sorting out their feelings with them, I guess.” Haechan shrugs all nonchalant and Yukhei gapes at him, dropping his hands.

“You’re kind of amazing sometimes. Like, really. I’m thoroughly amazed.”

“Sometimes?” Haechan huffs.

“Fine—a lot of the time.”

“It’s about time you realized.”

“I’ve always known. It’s not my fault I only get to see your mean sides.” It’s not really true. Yukhei has seen more of his caring sides than he can count. “Do you think you could teach me your ways?”

Haechan laughs at him, and he laughs back. That night he goes to bed feeling like somebody has his back and like he’s got the world in his hands.

☼

The campfire pit at Yes! Today is not utilized nearly as often as it should be. 

At the base of the open amphitheater is a circular fire pit four feet in diameter and made of stone with the potential for building a bonfire. Most of the time, Doyoung just throws in a few logs, ignites it and calls it a night, sometimes allowing for supervised marshmallow roasting until the embers burn out or the last of the marshmallows are consumed. Campfires are the first thing anyone can think of when the word camping comes to mind (it’s in the name for heaven’s sake!) but the event of an actual fire being lit comes around every other week, usually falling on days the truck delivering their food supply comes by, or during special events. Even then, the entire ordeal isn’t too grand as their kitchen head, Yuta, is the one putting in the orders for marshmallows and he isn’t much of a sweet tooth and they only have so much fire wood. In conclusion, campfires aren’t a huge deal. 

When Yangyang bursts into the cabin half past seven, Yukhei is off duty and dozing off. When Yangyang tells him that Doyoung just set up and lit an actual bonfire as tall as he, Yukhei is wiping off the drool from his chin and shoving his feet into his dirty sneakers to follow him out the creaky door of their cabin. 

The fire is raging when the amphitheater comes into view. The cracking of the fire is heard even over the excited chatter of the campers and Choerry’s shrieking every time a stray spark flies in her general direction. 

He spots Doyoung standing with his arms crossed over his chest a little ways from the fire, eyes reflecting the light of the roaring flames. 

“What’s the occasion?” he inquires as he joins the man in facing the pit, feeling the heat of the fire from even a dozen feet away. 

“No occasion. _Someone_ just convinced Yuta to buy way too many marshmallows.” Doyoung directs a glare towards Taeyong who is happily skewering four marshmallows onto a branch. The look is filled with more fondness than resentment and Yukhei bites back a knowing smile. 

“Make sure no one burns themselves alright?” Doyoung requests once his resolve finally breaks and he tells Yukhei he’s going to make a smore. Really he’s just walking over to Taeyong to scold him for taking so many marshmallows. 

Yukhei walks around the fire and takes a seat on a log next to a humming little girl.

“Wish someone was singing or something. It would make everything perfect.” she suggests quietly. Yukhei nods in agreement before his eyes start to roam.

A few kids are scattered here and there, some roasting marshmallows, others just sitting around and enjoying the heat of the flames. He spots someone walking up from the other side of the bonfire, and something glistening against the light.

It’s Haechan, he realises, holding a guitar. The boy greets some of the people around him before sitting on a log similar to Yukhei and immediately starts strumming. 

The crowd falls silent, nothing but the crackle of burning wood and the plucking of strings all melding together into a melody meant for summer nights. They all want to hear it.

Yukhei doesn’t recognise the song, but the chords are twinkly and light, like Haechan’s hands weren’t playing, but dancing along the strings themselves. And then he starts singing.

Everyone’s heard Haechan’s voice before. It’s no secret that his vocal chords were made to sing and belt out and hum and reverberate. His voice is sweet honey to sour eardrums. 

Yukhei has heard Haechan sing. There’s barely a moment in the day the boy isn’t carrying a tune or following a melody. He sings in the shower, when walking to his destination, when absentmindedly performing duties. Though his singing tonight is something else. 

That could be attributed to the way he looks tonight.

It’s nothing special, really. Haechan always looks like this, like a burning sunset, like golden amber, like sparkling honeycomb singing about love and other achingly sweet somethings. Yukhei is convinced it’s only cause he had just woken up and wasn’t fully in it yet.

Yukhei tries his best to focus on the crackling fire in front of him, or the kids shoving marshmallows into their mouths, or even the beetle making its slow trek across the uneven dirt, but his gaze falls back onto Haechan with every few moments without fail like a magnet. 

His eyes rake over the way the light of the flame sets his skin ablaze and casts the shadows of his face anywhere and everywhere. His eyes reflect the fire and it makes the whole of his parts look like a doll; glassy, marble-like and unreal. An oil painting done in a palette of orange and gold.

The spell is broken when Haechan’s gaze finally lands on Yukhei and his carefree smile falters. Yukhei just grins at him, even tossing his hand up for a little wave and Haechan looks away quickly. 

A part of him feels longing, but he isn’t sure what for.

☼

Haechan learns Yukhei’s name by accident. 

At Yes! Today summer camp, Doyoung and Taeyong don’t ask the teenage counselors to go by wacky and outrageous camp names by any means, but they insist for the sake of everyone’s privacy that they go by a nickname or alias. To be fair, it does make it a lot easier to go back home at the end of summer and not have to worry about twenty or thirty middle schoolers requesting to follow your instagram account—even if all he posts are stupid Fortnite memes and selfies taken from unconventional angles. (Yangyang likes to post angry little comments on each one saying how he still doesn’t look bad in any of them and he curses his wasteful good looks.)

The culture at Yes! Today has made it so that real names are used as the ultimate blackmail material among campers. Bets are placed on if Yangyang’s really named Levi or Katy’s real name is Lola, kids beg for days for a hint like a first letter or how many syllables. Most of the counselors just shut them down with a stern “No,” or, like Yukhei, they distract them with something else. It’s rather tedious to deal with, but in a way it builds up rapport. 

Yukhei has never been the type to dangle the prospect of his real name in front of a kid like a trap in order for them to like him more or something. He’s never even really thought of the name thing as a big deal, just another camp custom he had to get used to. And besides, Lucas is a lot easier for kids to say over and over again a million times. 

Yukhei knows a few of the other counselor’s names, mainly because those are the ones who insisted on exchanging social media accounts when camp had come to a close. Yukhei himself had never sought any of the others out for identity reveals or pressed anyone for what school they attended. Taeyong likes to complain about him being _too_ kid focused, often tells him to lighten up and socialize. Doyoung likes to pat him on the back and tell him to keep staying out of drama—Haechan not included.

So what if he’s a little private or if he genuinely has no interest in learning if Lip’s real name was Jungeun? In all honesty, he thinks he would have a hard time in continuing to use camp aliases if he knew everyone’s names to begin with. Learning Lip’s name had mostly been an accident of bad timing (and also Choerry’s fault entirely). Luckily, no kids were around at the exact time. 

The same can be said for Haechan and him. 

It’s early morning, the dew still threatening to drip from blades of grass on which they hang precariously. Yangyang and Yukhei are on pool cleaning duty, which is dreaded, but alongside Yangyang he supposes he can make it through. 

They’re pretty close. In some ways, Yangyang reminds him of Haechan. He’s got all the boyish charm and straightforwardness wrapped up in a bubbly little (at least to Yukhei’s long self) package. He’s also taken a liking to Yukhei and often hangs off him like a leech. Yangyang had practically begged him for his number the end of camp last summer so Yukhei could fulfill his promise of showing him how to execute a perfect football flip flop. Most of the time Yukhei has a hard time wrapping his head around why a cool kid like Yangyang would take such a liking to him, but he appreciates the company.

Like now, as they saunder into the dark and dreary tool shed to grab leaf skimmers and the vacuum. He’s telling some story about how his mom accidentally broke his Playstation while attempting to figure out how to turn the console off.

“—and she even tried to convince me she had gotten it sent to be cleaned! Think she mistook it for one of my dress shirts? Like, what kind of excuse is that? If you’re gonna toss my PS4 into the garbage, at least be real with me.” 

Yukhei laughs heartily at the image of Yangyang finding his entire console in their garbage bin just before his mom tells him she’s sent it away. 

“Well, at least she bought you a new one and everything. My mom doesn’t have any idea how to lie in the first place. We were talking about our dinner plans once and all of a sudden she just goes ‘Yukhei, I spilled coffee on your computer,’” he retells between fits of laughter as they walk out of the shed. 

“Yukhei?” comes a familiar voice, startling both him and Yangyang into jumping and screeching like prepubescent boys. 

Haechan sits on the edge of the pool, shoes off and beside him as he kicks his feet around in the water.

“God, and I thought little girls were bad,” Haechan chuckles as he approaches. “So… Yukhei, huh?” His tone is condescending and Yukhei considers pushing him into the dirty water.

Yukhei looks to Yangyang for assistance, or a way out or anything. All he does is shake his head as he slinks back into the shed. Yukhei groans out loud.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he utters, moving to the side opposite to Haechan as he starts fishing things out of the blue water. 

“You know, strangely it suits you.” Yukhei ignores him in favor of focusing on scooping up a floating pair of goggles that was just out of reach of the skimmer.

“I would hope so, it’s my name after all.”

“Pshh, who doesn’t know what I’m talking about?” Haechan scoffs as dips his hand and flings some water in Yukhei’s direction. He kicks his legs a few times. The ripples have the goggles landing right into Yukhei’s net.

“I will not deny nor confirm,” he says through a grimace over a clump of hair in the net.

“Name-dropping your own name when quoting someone else is the rookie-est mistake in the book, _Yukhei_ ,” he emphasizes. Yukhei’s eyes widen dramatically as he nearly drops his skimmer to shush Haechan.

“What if someone were to hear you?”

“What? And find out your name is _Yukhei_?”

He pouts at the other boy. “Please don’t make this a habit.”

☼

It’s Yukhei’s day for origami. It’s a day he has been dreading, but he knows once he sits down and starts, he’ll enjoy it regardless of the papercuts and ridicule he’s bound to receive. 

Recreation stations (as Taeyong liked to rhyme them) are rotational. Some days it’s volleyball and finger painting, other days it’s blowing bubbles by the stream and Gaga Ball. There are typically four or five stations set up for the campers to go around to for a more structured recreation, or they have the choice of doing whatever safe activity they want within the vicinity of a counselor. 

Origami isn’t exactly the most popular station.

Mostly, it’s a table set up in some side room of one of the main buildings with assorted colorful pieces of paper and a book filled with tutorials on how to fold a dragon or a cat head or something. 

Yukhei sits at a table slightly too small for him and goes through the step by step of folding a less-than-perfect paper crane with two kids from cabin 7. They don’t really pay attention to him and focus more on bickering with one another on which fold goes first and why that corner is there and—hey, that doesn’t look like the picture at all. At least the room is air conditioned.

After four crumpled attempts, they get bored of it and run off to do something actually fun. Yukhei is not even spared a goodbye. 

Checking the clock on the wall, he sees there’s still an hour more of recreation left to go. Heaving a sigh, he picks up another piece of paper and turns to a random page in the book to start folding again. It’s unlikely any other kids would be joining him. He could just up and leave, but he’s also pretty sure Doyoung is just outside leading a game of Everybody’s It Tag, and he would likely be reprimanded for leaving his station unattended.

Yukhei jumps when he finally notices the shadowy presence lurking at the door. His knee bangs the table and he groans at the pain that surges up his leg. He nearly curses.

“Jeez, fraidy-cat, it’s just me,” Haechan mumbles as he slips into the room and takes a seat across from him. 

“A perfectly valid thing to be terrified of,” Yukhei sneers. He rubs at his knee. It’ll probably bruise. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to do some origami, alright? No need to be so hostile,” Haechan says while flipping through the stack of origami paper and choosing a bright orange one. The color strangely suits him.

Yukhei quirks an eyebrow at him. 

“Sure,” he draws out and goes back to folding his paper chicken.

There’s a few minutes of silent paper folding that Yukhei is both grateful for and surprised at. He had never heard of a quiet moment with Haechan. He takes a peek over at the other boy and is taken aback when he sees he’s ripped his square sheet of paper into long strips, one of the strips being folded in his hands. 

“What are you doing?” he inquires, leaning in to get a closer look at the paper in Haechan’s hands.

The boy just shushes him and continues wrapping the strip around itself. Once there’s nothing left he does something Yukhei can’t see before opening his palm toward him to show him what it was.

In the center of his hand lies an orange, perfectly puffed up star.

Yukhei lights up at the sight of it. “That’s so freaking cute!” He reaches a hand out to grab it and inspect the thing further.

“Paper star,” Haechan says smugly. “I can teach you. If you want.” Yukhei nods so hard his neck cracks.

“Wait. Let me finish this last fold first and… Voila!” Yukhei exclaims as he holds up his chicken.

Haechan stares at it for approximately thirty seconds before bursting into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. He wheezes and gasps and slaps his hand against the table and he is so hysterical, it makes Yukhei want to laugh too. So he does despite not really knowing why he should be in the first place.

“What is it?” he asks through chuckles.

“It looks so bad!” 

Yukhei inspects his chicken further. Sure, it’s a little wrinkled and the feet are uneven, but he doesn’t think it’s too bad for a first attempt. It’s not his fault his big hands aren’t made for creating tiny paper objects. He frowns at the giggling boy.

“Don’t be mean.”

“And why did you choose green paper for a chicken?” Donghyuck questions before breaking out into another round of laughing. Yukhei doesn’t indulge him, just huffs and grabs one of Haechan’s paper strips. He represses the smile that threatens to break through his offended exterior.

“Just shut up and teach me how to make your stupid stars already.”

Haechan is meticulous. Yukhei has known this through working with him for a year now. He’s more detail oriented than most people believe him to be and it makes itself apparent now as he shows him step by step how to fold and wrap and pinch the strip of paper into a star.

Yukhei stares in awe at his own little star the palm of his hand. It’s good. Dare he say, it’s perfect, almost an exact replica of Haechan’s own. He’s mesmerised by his own work. He’s drawn back to reality when Haechan clears his throat loudly.

“Donghyuck,” he says suddenly, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

“What?” Yukhei asks, lifting his head to stare at the other boy’s profile. Haechan just avoids eye contact.

“My name,” he utters. “It’s Donghyuck. Lee.” Yukhei continues to stare, befuddled, speechless. It only spurs the other boy to keep talking to try and explain himself.

“I just thought… Well, since I know your name, it’s only fair that you know mine.” His words spill out in a frenzy. “I’m just evening the playing ground.”

“Yeah,” Yukhei finally responds lamely. Haechan (Donghyuck?) regards him with a look of half expectancy and half bewilderment at the bland reply. Yukhei can tell the reveal meant much more to Donghyuck than it did to him, but he also can’t really wrap his head around it in the first place. He wasn’t sure what Donghyuck was going to do with the knowledge of _his_ name, but he was even less sure of what he could do with Donghyuck’s. Was this a trap? Maybe the other boy really _was_ just trying to even the playing ground.

“Sure. Yeah. Donghyuck.” The name feels foreign on his tongue, but it rolls off nicely. “Good to meet you.” Donghyuck just laughs and for the second time that day, he doesn’t completely detest the sound of it.

“No need to make it awkward, _Yukhei_ ,” he voices quietly and although hearing his name in this setting is strange, Yukhei likes the sound of it. 

The rest of the time spent in the cramped room is filled with the sound of paper being folded and unfolded and not much else, a pile of stars forming in the middle of the table.

☼

Things are changing. Yukhei can’t tell if this is due to the sheer sadness the entire camp is feeling due to this being the original campers’ last summer here, or something else. All Yukhei knows is that he feels different.

Feelings come to him differently, like a bucket of cold ice over his unsuspecting head. He’s been thinking a lot, which nothing good can come out of. Yukhei has mainly been thinking of Donghyuck.

There must be a point in time in which he formally stopped hating his guts. He just can’t figure out when, and it kills him because that is what their entire relationship is based off of.

It started early on.

The first week Donghyuck had started working had been fine. He had assimilated nicely into their team and Yukhei had genuinely looked forward to working with him.

Then it went downhill.

Pranks are taken seriously, and they’re to be taken with a grain of salt, but the sheer influx of pranks played on Yukhei by Donghyuck had been ridiculous. Yukhei couldn’t have just sat around and let it happen to him. Although frustratingly patient, even he had his limits. With the addition of his own revenge pranks against Donghyuck, Donghyuck had to step up his game, and it all escalated from there. Their little game had even gained the attention of the campers, which is how their Tom-and-Jerry relationship had gotten so infamous in the first place.

Never had Yukhei taken any time to learn real, tangible things about Donghyuck other than that he sleeps with his mouth open (learned over many trips to his bunk to put creepy crawlies into his sleeping bag) and that he has a serious distaste for salt in his coffee instead of sugar (self explanatory). Which is possibly why Yukhei finds it so hard to believe that perhaps he’s starting to warm up to the boy. As bad as it may seem, Donghyuck is hardly another person to him.

That is, until recently. And it kills him.

☼

“Don’t you think Lucas and Yuqi would look really cute together?” Yukhei overhears Minseo whispering to Hwan in the midst of the cabin getting ready for bed. He frowns. He’s about to tell them to be quiet when Hwan starts to reply.

“No way. I like him and Haechan together,” Hwan says before they both begin snickering.

Yukhei pretends he doesn’t hear anything and bids them all a good night.

The next morning he wakes up to earthworms in his shoes and Donghyuck nowhere to be found in the cabin. Xiaojun tells Yukhei he had left early, despite not having any morning duties.

☼

People don’t simply expect things like this to happen. It’s not written in the stars or in weekly horoscopes. Yet despite all of this, Yukhei kind of blames himself for it. Not more than he blames Haechan though. Never more than that.

There is water up his nose, in his eyes and his ears and soaking through all of his clothes. It’s cold, but not refreshing in the slightest considering how he hadn’t foreseen being tripped into the duck pond today no matter how hot it was forecasted to be. 

Donghyuck had been coming from the opposite direction with a gaggle of restless kids complaining about the heat. 

Yukhei himself felt the humid air clinging to his skin like film and it made him feel sticky, unwell even. He wanted nothing more than a cold shower at the end of the evening. And as he had been daydreaming about ice cold water hitting his skin, he hadn’t been paying attention to Donghyuck, which was his first mistake. 

Donghyuck had stuck a leg out as he passed, catching on Yukhei’s ankle mid step and causing him to teeter on the edge of the pond before falling in completely. 

He emerges to Donghyuck and his kids at laughing as he sputters and chokes. 

Ordinarily, Yukhei is a good sport about these things. Kids like him because he’s patient. He can laugh off a bit of fun-poking and the occasional rubber band being flung at him from across the room. It could be attributed to the way his neck was aching from sleeping weird, or the way he hadn’t really gotten much sleep at all because he had a stomach ache from dinner, or possibly how he ran into the flagpole on accident on the way to lunch and his entire head had been throbbing since, that he is in a royally terrible mood today.

He feels his resolve snap like a toothpick.

Yukhei spits out a mouthful of pond water before directing a glare toward the culprit.

“Would you seriously knock it off for once? Like, give it a freaking rest! All you do is treat me like crap and I’m tired of it. Every time I begin to think you’re alright, you do dumb stuff like this. Just stay away from me if you hate me so much!” he screams, eyes clenched shut in frustration. The outburst is the second mistake he makes today. 

Laughter dies instantly on the tongues of everyone around them.

Donghyuck flusteredly tells his kids to keep walking as he trails behind, ears bright red and eyes unreadable.

Yukhei isn’t spared another glance.

The climb out of the pond is slippery and he almost ends up falling right back in before Yangyang takes pity on him and offers his hand.

“What? Is there something stuck on me?” Yukhei asks when he notices Yangyang looking at him in disapproval.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Yangyang suggests, like Yukhei is the crazy one overreacting. 

“How can you say that? Have you met the guy? He’s out for my guts! He’s the devil reincarnate,” Yukhei voices in exasperation, wringing out as much of his shirt as he can and shaking his wet hair out like a dog. It’s obvious now that he is the only one who can see what a menace Donghyuck was.

“Have you ever thought maybe he has a reason for acting the way he does? You’re great at seeing that in the kids, why is this so hard for you to look past? Hasn’t he done worse?”

“Yes, there’s been worse, but that really isn’t the point. Kids are kids. Haechan isn’t a kid.”

“He’s younger than you!”

“We’re all practically the same age, Yangyang. It’s no excuse.” 

“Consider this—if Haechan _were_ a kid and acting this way, how would you approach him?”

“I don’t know. He’s not a kid. I’ve never thought about that.”

If Yukhei had to think about it, if Donghyuck was actually a kid he was dealing with, he would know exactly what to do. Child management was something that now came as second nature to him. It’s a step by step process: take them aside, ask them what caused that behavior, take any necessary actions to prevent said behaviors from occurring again, and if the problem persists create a consequence. 

Yangyang doesn’t seem to understand that Donghyuck isn’t a kid and it’s not as easy as taking him aside and interrogating him to get to the root of his problems. And frankly, Yukhei doesn’t really feel like it’s his responsibility to deal with in the first place. He’s not paid to counsel his peers. 

Yangyang shrugs at him. “Maybe you should consider it. You’re much more open to your campers than you are to him.”

“Equity over equality, Yangyang.”

“Can’t you just look past the stupid pranks for one second and see him for an actual person? Like, God, I’d be annoyed at him for all the petty things too, but is Haechan as your coworker and your friend really that bad? You know, he’s been going through a lot this year.”

“That’s really not my problem.”

“Fine,” Yangyang relents, arms crossed over his chest.

“I don’t know why you’re getting mad at me for!”

“Because you fail to realize how hard emotions are for Haechan!”

“Just because he’s emotionally constipated, doesn’t give him the excuse to trip me into the lake!”

Yangyang runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “Was it that big of a deal?”

The question has Yukhei growing quiet and considering for a moment if it was.

“... No, but—“

“But nothing. Are you being a CUTIE right now?”

CUTIE is an acronym most likely made up by Taeyong. Each letter the beginning of one of his recommended actions to take when dealing with a child’s misbehavior. It’s simple, really.

 **C** lear your mind. When dealing with children, it’s crucial to always be the most levelminded and grounding person in the room. There’s this saying Doyoung likes: You can’t pour from an empty cup.

 **U** nderstanding. Access the situation and get the details. Why’s it happening? What were the effects? Try to see things from the child’s point of view.

 **T** alk it out. The importance of letting the child tell you with their own words is substantial if you want to keep their trust. Yukhei is always pleasantly surprised by how insightful and genuine kids can be during this step. It’s when he finds them opening up the most.

 **I** nitiate a conversation. Most of the time, children won’t do the nitty gritty to fix things unless explicitly asked to. It’s up to the grown people with more developed frontal cortices to step up to the plate and get things done.

 **E** mpathize with them. There’s nothing more frustrating to a kid than knowing an adult isn’t really getting where they’re coming from. Practicing empathy has changed not only Yukhei’s perception of child care, but of life.

Is Donghyuck tripping Yukhei into the lake a big deal? To Yukhei’s pride, yes. To his conscience, not really. Is he being a CUTIE? Not in the slightest.

He likes to believe he’s trying his best to accept Donghyuck for all that he is—a royal pain in his ass—but deep down he knows he could cut the other boy a little slack. Perhaps he was too harsh on him. And maybe, just maybe, the sight of Haechan looking hurt stung the teeniest bit. It’s just hard to believe Yangyang when Yukhei has only ever known the opposite of what he preaches. 

With some more nagging from Yangyang, he makes a resolution to make amends with the other boy.

☼

Yukhei isn’t ever called into the office. He does what he’s told when he’s told and takes care of his kids. People aren’t usually called in unless they’ve done something that requires disciplinary action, or a kid getting a fever. He checks his temperature before he knocks. Feels fine to him. There’s no reason for him to be called in. Except he was.

The office itself isn’t such a bad place. It’s a room in the back of the staff cabin with two desks facing one another and an overabundance of potted plants, likely from Doyoung. Taeyong sits in a rolling chair and, to Yukhei’s surprise, Donghyuck sits in a cushy chair in front of the man.

“Lucas! Great!” Taeyong says in greeting.

“Lucas? What’s he doing here? Is this what we’ve been waiting fifteen minutes for?” Donghyuck demands astonishedly. Taeyong waves his hand at him dismissively and doesn’t indulge him in his questioning. 

“Now that you’re both here, I can get started.” 

Taeyong opens a desk drawer and presents the two with a scroll. He unrolls it to reveal a map of the campsite. There are markings covering the upper right of the property; red x’s, blue o’s, green stars, and a twisty dotted trail in white. A section in the corner is boxed off and labelled as a legend.

“You two are both off any duties for tonight and tomorrow morning?” Taeyong implies more than asks. “I have a special task for you.”

“We’re planning a scavenger hunt. It’ll be cabin vs cabin and it’s taking place tomorrow, all over the site. I want you two to go out and plant all the items in the places marked by midnight.” 

“What?” the two cry out in unison. Their eyes flit back and forth between one another and Taeyong who is giving them an apologetic shrug.

“You’re the only two that are free right now. My hands are tied. The supplies are all in the shed behind the shower house,” Taeyong explains with finality as he hands Yukhei the map. 

“C’mon Taeyong. What about our sleep!” Donghyuck protests. 

“As much as I’m down to help, I agree with the sleep,” Yukhei adds quietly.

“Did I mention you’ll get a bonus?”

☼

“Let’s just get this over with as fast as possible. I’m trying to get into my bunk and sleep right up until the breakfast bell rings,” Donghyuck grumbles as he drags along a coil of rope. Yukhei obliges, easily keep up with Donghyuck’s stride. He swears he hears the other boy curse his long legs under his breath. Yukhei perks up just a tiny bit. 

Yukhei has been assigned with carrying the backpack with all of the scavenger hunt items. Various knick-knacks like a bar of soap, binoculars, a straw hat are all on the list. He can’t even tell what the theme of the scavenger hunt is supposed to be. 

“This is so lame,” Donghyuck complains halfway through the list. Yukhei can tell that he’s especially grumpy tonight from the incessant whining. Whether that has to do with Haechan being grouped with him or being forced to do this setting up, or maybe both, Yukhei isn’t sure.

Yukhei had just planted the jar of jellybeans in the lowest branch of a tree Donghyuck couldn’t reach. 

“And I wish you would just let me see the goddamn map for once. If I had a penny for every time we have taken the wrong term, I wouldn’t even need the bonus.”

“I’m in charge of the map, okay? Taeyong gave it to me. And it was _one time_. Alright, don’t look at me like that… Two times!”

It feels good to be back to their carefree bickering like this. He most definitely prefers it to Donghyuck avoiding his line of vision and ignoring him. He would take an annoying Donghyuck over no Donghyuck any day. 

They’re making good time. They’re a good team. Donghyuck holds the list of items and retrieves them from the backpack slung on Yukhei’s back and places them where Yukhei sees on the map. His watch says it’s still fifteen past 11, and they only have four more items to place before they can start walking back to the main site.

Yukhei mentions to Donghyuck they’ll be on time to get back and get at least 8 hours and he smiles at him.

He feels good. 

Rain in a forest is slow at first. No matter how hard of a downpour, the first few drops will have to penetrate through layers upon layers of foliage to reach the duff. But once it does reach the ground, there is nothing anyone underneath can do—the delay has guaranteed that an onslaught of precipitation would be arriving any moment after the first drop hit. 

The downpour caught them by surprise. 

Yukhei had been explaining the map for the nth time when Donghyuck suddenly grimaced at him. 

“Ugh,” he had groaned. “You spit on me.” Donghyuck’s hands had flown up to wipe the supposed spit from his cheek, however as he wiped the place on his cheek, another appeared. And another and another and another until they were standing uncovered in the middle of a summer shower. 

The skies open over them unrelentingly, sheets of rainfall one after another. The earth around them is soaked within a minute.

“You’re kidding me!” Donghyuck squeals as he makes a futile attempt at shielding himself from oncoming raindrops with his hands over his head. 

Yukhei has already folded the map and tucked it into the backpack. The rain would seep through to it in no time, he’s sure, but he also supposes any delay in the inevitable drenching of their only way back to the campsite is better than none at all. 

Beside him, Donghyuck is still frowning. He’s given up trying to shield himself from the rain, arms at his sides while the downpour pelting down on him with no remorse. His face is solemn. The sight of him is pitiful. It makes Yukhei want to reach out and pinch his cheek. But then he realizes what he’s thinking and shakes himself out of it.

“Come on,” Yukhei calls to him over the drumming of water against earth. It would be rather calming if they weren’t getting soaked in it. Yukhei thinks he would like to fall asleep to it.

“Come on where?” Donghyuck shouts back. Yukhei tells him he doesn’t know and starts walking knowing Donghyuck will follow anyway. It’s his only option, other than attempting his own way back, but they were probably more than a mile out and there’s no way he would find his way back alone in the dark with this rain. 

He keeps his strides quick and long and Donghyuck matches his pace rather well. Yukhei navigates them through the last flickering light of Donghyuck’s flashlight to where he’s sure he had seen a cabin marked on the map.

The rainfall stays steady as they walk, making the duff under their shoes slippery. Donghyuck ends up stepping on an exposed root and losing his footing. Before he can hit the ground, Yukhei’s hands instinctively come out to grab him. His arms wind around the boy’s middle and he holds him there for a moment too long as Donghyuck gets his wits back. He scrambles out of Yukhei’s arms and nearly slips again in his frenzy. Silently, Yukhei grabs a hold of Donghyuck’s free hand and doesn’t let go as he continues walking ahead. Donghyuck doesn’t try to pull away. 

His grip on the smaller hand is slick from the rain, making it difficult for him to keep hold as he rushes through the forest. It only makes him grasp harder. 

They hear it before they see it. The raindrops clink onto the roofing making it sound more like hail than water. The windows are free of glass and boarded up, the door is without a handle. 

Yukhei, despite the eerie feeling the building sends creeping up his neck, pulls Donghyuck towards the door along with him. Just as he gives the door an experimental push, the squeak of its hinges are barely heard over a crack of thunder. Donghyuck jumps beside him and his nails dig into Yukhei’s hand. Just then, Donghyuck’s flashlight flickers out and dies. From the way the smaller boy’s eyes flit back and forth from the dark sky and the door, he’s having trouble figuring out what he is more afraid of, which he would rather take refuge under. 

“Please go inside,” he decides when the skies crack with a boom a second time. Yukhei obliges as he takes a tentative step into the dark building. The floor groans with his weight, but feels sturdy enough. He tugs on Donghyuck’s hand to bring him out of the rain once he’s sure their combined weight won’t make the rotting boards cave in. 

The air inside is humid and dusty. Yukhei sneezes as soon as he’s fully inside, Donghyuck quivering in the door frame behind him. Once his eyes adjust to the darkness, Yukhei can make out empty bunk bed frames occupying the four corners of the room. Cobwebs take up every available crack and crevice. The only source of light was through a hole in the roof, a sliver of moonlight shining through onto the floorboards. The roof drips with runoff rain.

They both peel off their soaked shoes and socks and find a dry place on the floor to sit down. 

It’s awkward. But it’s not like they’ve never been alone together before, and they were bantering just fine before the rain had started. Yukhei clears his throat.

“Now that I’ve gotten you alone,” he starts. Donghyuck gives him a strange look from where he’s seated, emptying water out of his shoe over the hole in the floor beside him. 

“We’ve been alone,” Donghyuck points out snottily. “Where are you going with this?” Donghyuck questions carefully. Yukhei’s ears go hot with the implication.

“I just want to talk, get your mind out of the gutter,” he scoffs when he sees Donghyuck’s scandalized expression. 

“First… I wanted to say sorry.” 

Donghyuck is shocked by this, and although his face is impassive, Yukhei can tell because he goes uncharacteristically quiet. He gulps, taking it as his cue to continue.

“Sorry for yelling at you that day. I really didn’t mean it, I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you and—yeah, I’m just sorry.”

Donghyuck nods. “It’s okay. I knew you would snap at me one of these days.”

They both go quiet then, nothing but the drip of water and their mingled breaths. Yukhei inhales deeply before he gathers enough courage to break the silence again.

“I am curious though. Why do you go out of your way to make my life suck?” he exhales as he looks Donghyuck in the eyes. The question sounds more harsh than he intends, but still he feels he needs to ask. 

He can see droplets of rain hanging on Donghyuck’s thick eyelashes as morning dew sticks onto blades of grass. The eyes underneath those lashes look up at him in what is somewhere between a glare and sheepish like a stubborn child refusing to admit defeat. 

“What? Have nothing to say now?” Yukhei prods, thinking if he tried to lighten the mood, bring back their Tom and Jerry act, the tension hanging in the air would finally break. 

Donghyuck looks away from him as he peels off his outer layers. He wrings out his jacket and his socks and hangs them over the edge of a bunk bed frame. Yukhei’s nerves egg him to continue his rambling.

“It’s okay if you don’t like me. I know not everyone in life's gonna like me, but I wish I knew why you actively hated me. Do I smell or something? Do you have a thing against blondes? You certainly get along with Katy just fine—”

Donghyuck lets out a groan. Before he has time to respond, Donghyuck stomps over to him and slaps a wet hand over his mouth.

“First of all, you’re not even a real blonde. Second of all, I am sorry if my pranks are too… much for you. I’ll tone it down from now on. And no, you don’t smell. Are we good?”

“You missed a question,” Yukhei mumbles from underneath Donghyuck’s warm hand. Donghyuck squeaks at the feeling of Yukhei’s warm breath and removes it. “Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t,” he states with finality.

“It sure seems like you do.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I did.”

It’s probably true. Donghyuck could have just said he didn’t want the bonus and Taeyong could have asked someone else to do it. Donghyuck could have just avoided him the entire duration of camp. But he doesn’t. Instead Donghyuck makes fun of him, plays pranks on him that leaves him with a mouth on fire, trips him into lakes, gets kids to call him Lukey Pukey, follows him around to heckle him, reveals his real name to him, teaches him how to be a better counselor, looks like heaven in campfire light, makes a room fall in silence when he sings, laughs at Yukhei’s worst jokes and now he is here with him during a summer storm in the dark in an old dusty cabin in the middle of the woods that’s one gust from crumbling completely. And maybe it should mean something more, but Yukhei can’t wrap his head around what any of it means.

A deafening boom startles even Yukhei. Donghyuck is by his side in a split second, one of his hands holding onto Yukhei’s shirt and the other balled up into a tight fist by his side.

It’s almost hard to believe that the Donghyuck he’s familiar with, who is so full of fighting spirit, can be reduced to someone so small and vulnerable by something like lightning and thunder.

A shock of lightning strikes the earth soon after, lighting up the skies and the wide dusty space for a split second. Still, it is enough to clearly illuminate the sheer terror on Donghyuck’s face and Yukhei’s feels his own heart wind tightly at the sight. It’s the way his eyes glisten in their own unshed tears, the way his lips are parted in surprise, the way his tanned cheeks still blush from embarrassment after being seen so frightened, the way his hands grip so tightly on the hem of Yukhei’s shirt, that makes him want to risk it all to protect the boy from the electricity flowing through the open skies. 

Yukhei’s mind is in a frenzy, his body operating on autopilot. His heartbeat is ringing in his ears from his own shock from the thunder and he isn’t really thinking about it before his hands are cupping Donghyuck’s warm face. 

Just as soon as Donghyuck’s plush lips are pressed against his and he realizes what he’s doing, they’re off them again. The kiss felt electrified and Yukhei can’t tell if that’s from the static running through the air or something else entirely. 

Donghyuck takes a step back from him, a hand flying up to cover his mouth in shock, eyes blown wide open.

“Wait—I’m sorry. I wasn't thinking. Donghyuck,” he says it all quickly, but cautiously, calculating the other boy’s reaction with every word.

“Donghyuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t-I didn’t mean it.” 

There is something about his own words that irk him in the depths of his mind. Had he meant it? As foreign as the feeling is, he wants to kiss Donghyuck, his own body has made it clear as day to him. But knowing this one answer opens up the floodgates for dozens of others to emerge.

The lightning is almost forgotten as Donghyuck blinks up at him, but another flash of light from above illuminates the sky and his body tenses once again. 

His face scrunches up into an ugly grimace. In the absence of sound, Yukhei listens to Donghyuck gulp down three breaths before he suddenly closes the gap he had created between them in the first place. It’s so sudden that Yukhei jumps. 

“Don’t-just don’t say anything. A-and don’t try anything else either,” he mumbles as he leans into Yukhei, head falling into his chest and arms winding around his middle. His typical hostility melted away, leaving him bare and terrified. “Just let me do this for a second.” 

And he does. 

They don’t really talk about it. They don’t talk at all.

Yukhei ends up sitting against the wall, knees drawn up and a tense Donghyuck between them against his chest quivering at the sound of the sky rumbling and readying itself for another blast of voltage. 

The thunder is sporadic and every time it sounds, Donghyuck curls onto himself just a little more until he’s just a little ball of himself. Yukhei feels a little helpless watching him, only being able to wrap his arms around him and whisper that it’s alright, that it would soon pass.

It’s not a lie. It passes, eventually. Donghyuck isn’t awake to hear the rain trickle into nothing or see the clouds part to allow the moon to emerge.

When Yukhei sees the storm has passed, he briefly considers trying to go back to the main campsite in the back of his mind, but not only did they not have a viable source of light, Donghyuck was in no state to meander into the dark wood all drowsy and worn. He’s repositioned them, Donghyuck still curled up on the floor as Yukhei wraps himself around him. 

As Yukhei lies awake, he listens to the sound of run-off droplets hitting the rotting floor of the cabin and he thinks about the questions he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to answer for himself. How long had he wanted to do that? And why did he think the time was now? 

The skies are just starting to wake up when Yukhei finally falls asleep to Donghyuck’s steady breathing and the sound of his own heart thudding in his chest.

The morning after, Yukhei wakes up to find Donghyuck already up and pulling his dry jacket on. On the way back, they take the back trails to avoid getting caught and don’t mention about the night before even once.

There is guilt crawling along the back of Yukhei’s throat, but it catches his tongue and there’s nothing more he can say.

☼

It’s snickerdoodle pancakes today.

Yukhei wouldn’t know this if it weren’t for the way Donghyuck, without fail, barrels into him in the breakfast line every single snickerdoodle pancake day whilst claiming it was his absolute favorite and insisting he deserves the biggest one they can cook up. 

Of course the kitchen staff adore him (despite the wasabi muffin incident) and give it to him. Sometimes Yuta even makes him a heart shaped one. Yukhei _really_ doesn’t mind him getting his way all the time—he swears. He doesn’t even like cinnamon.

Today, Donghyuck sits with some kids from his cabin. Sometimes he did that. But it was becoming more often after recent events. It had been a week since the entire incident and every day since, Donghyuck had been avoiding him like the plague. Even the other counselors were getting concerned.

“Is Haechan alright?” Snoopy wonders aloud, sneakily taking glances at Yukhei. 

“Why are you looking at me? I don’t know,” Yukhei says defensively, only proving to the other counselors that he indeed knows what’s wrong with Donghyuck. He’s being honest in that he really doesn’t know if Donghyuck is alright. He can only hope he is.

Yukhei sneaks a glance over to cabin 5’s table and it’s rambunctious as always. There is a pancake on somebody’s face, eye holes and a mouth cut out to create a breakfast atrocity. He cringes when another kid peels the pancake off and starts eating it. Amongst the chaos, Donghyuck sits and laughs. As usual, his plate is piled high with pancakes.

“He looks fine to me,” Yukhei voices with a shrug to the other counselors who take a look at the other boy and silently agree.

Donghyuck disappears from his table a few minutes later. Yukhei only notices due to the absence of sharp laughter. Yukhei excuses himself to the restroom.

The first thing Donghyuck does when he sees Yukhei isn’t at all surprising. He throws him a typical glare as he passes him by in one of the dimmer corridors of the dining hall. Donghyuck had been leaving the restrooms as Yukhei had been approaching. It’s nothing new, doesn’t phase Yukhei in the slightest. He’s usually on the receiving end of Donghyuck’s unfriendly looks. It’s the second thing Donghyuck does that throws Yukhei for a loop—maybe two. 

Donghyuck’s eyes break from his. Yukhei thinks they’re through for that moment, that he will peacefully use the restroom and then head back into the hustle and bustle of breakfast, be welcomed back to his usual table with a few jokes and jabs. But Donghyuck’s eyes only flit away from his from a moment before they’re back and glinting with something other than annoyance. 

Yukhei let’s an embarrassingly high pitched yelp escape him when his hand is grabbed and he’s dragged into a single stall occupancy. The light in this bathroom is motion censored and automatic, but delayed so it’s just the warm feeling of Donghyuck pressing him against a door in the dark for a solid six seconds. Yukhei is so confused he can’t find his words.

“I’m assuming this is okay,” Yukhei hears him say under his breath. If the bathroom wasn’t completely quiet, or if he was any more than eight inches away from the boy than he is, he probably wouldn’t have heard him at all. He doesn’t have time to dwell on that, however, because just as the lights come on, Donghyuck’s mouth is on his.

It’s chaste and quick and terribly confusing. Yukhei’s head was still spinning when Donghyuck pulls away and bolts out the door like he had never been there at all. The only proof of any of it not being a fever dream is the taste of cinnamon when Yukhei swipes his tongue along his lip. 

☼

Okay—this was kind of alright. A stolen kiss for a another. That’s like karma. Maybe Donghyuck had accepted his apology and this was his reparation process.

Yukhei truly believes this is the case because, quite frankly, he can’t see any other situation in which Donghyuck would willingly kiss him. Except Yukhei is often wrong. 

He’s on lifeguard duty today. There are a handful of kids splashing around the shallow end and Katy is also there supposedly on duty, but really she’s just floating around on a pineapple shaped floatie as she sips an iced lemonade. 

Yukhei messes with the red lanyard attached to his whistle. He’s bored out of his right mind, but he had already taken a 15 minute break earlier and wasted it on helping Choerry find a kid’s earring in the field. They hadn’t even found it in the end.

Katy calls out to him while he’s spraying himself with another layer of sunscreen. She’s drifted to the closest edge of the pool to him. She wants some too.

The bottle sputters until all it hisses out is air. Yukhei gives it a few useless shakes and tries again, but to no avail. He heaves a sigh.

“I’m gonna go grab some more. Watch the kids,” he says as he hops down from his post and jogs toward the shed.

There’s no actual light in the shed, just a tiny square shaped hole of a window at the top of the back wall to provide nothing more than a sliver of light. So he leaves the doors of the shed open to let in some extra sun as he strains his eyes to try and find some more sunscreen on the shelves.

He screams when the doors suddenly slam shut behind him and he whips around, his fists raised in defence.

“What were you gonna do? Punch me?” Donghyuck laughs at Yukhei’s stance in a way Yukhei is begrudgingly fond of. When had he started welcoming Donghyuck’s teasing?

“No,” he lies, lowering his arms and turning back around.

“Looking for this?”

Yukhei turns around to see a blue canister in Donghyuck’s hand. 

"Give me that," he commands, taking a step toward the other boy with his arm outstretched. He makes a grab at the canister, which Donghyuck dodges with a smirk. 

"Is this a challenge, _Donghyuck_?" he asks with a chuckle. "You do know I'm about four inches taller than you. Did you forget this orangutan wingspan?" Yukhei holds out his arms for dramatic effect, which Donghyuck laughs at. Yukhei seizes the opportunity, lunging at the canister. Donghyuck is startled by this, but his reflexes are quick as always. 

Donghyuck leaps back, nearly knocking his head on a shelf behind him, all while Yukhei reaches and reaches and reaches. His hand falls flats onto the wall behind Donghyuck's head.

Yukhei gulps. Donghyuck remains stoic.

Yukhei has seen this before. Yangyang's told him about it. An anime thing—Yangyang's field of expertise. Kabedon, or something that sounded like a deep fried pork cutlet. Initially, the word had made his stomach rumble, now it’s making his stomach churn.

Donghyuck looks up at Yukhei with something brewing in his irises. Was it expectancy? What could he be expecting? Yukhei hasn’t a clue. Or maybe he does and he’s too much of a coward to admit he knows exactly what Donghyuck is waiting for. And that maybe he wants the same thing.

He’s close enough to tell that Donghyuck’s breath smells minty, like he’s just eaten an Altoid. It’s likely that he has; there’s almost always a rattling tin can in his fanny pack, says it’s better than feeding his sweet tooth with sweets.

It’s hard to tell who leans in first. At this point, Yukhei isn’t even sure if it matters with the way they are both kissing each other with a matched fervor. Is that Donghyuck’s tongue? Whose teeth are those? Has the shed always been so warm?

Yukhei can’t find any answers except for the heaven that is Donghyuck’s mouth.

There are light footsteps sounding outside. They increase in volume with every step and Yukhei knows he has to pull away, but he can’t find the willpower to, not when Donghyuck’s hands are in his hair and his presence is _everywhere_. But Donghyuck has always been the more rational of them.

The smack that sounds as they pull apart is almost obscene and it gives Yukhei the chills despite how warm he feels.

Katy floods the shed with light once again and stares at the two in suspicion, a hand on her hip and her sunglasses perched high on her head to reveal her quirked eyebrow.

Yukhei gives her a halfhearted smile. 

“Found the sunscreen.”

☼

Donghyuck has started sitting next to Yukhei during most of their meals again, and unbeknownst to the rest of the counselors, he’s started to hold his hand under the table. Yukhei lets him.

☼

Naivety is an understatement when it comes to Yukhei.

As much as he believes this time will be the last, it never is, because the next thing he knows, he’s being dragged into the single stall occupancy again, or an empty cabin, or behind the blackberry bushes, or at the back of the hiking group, or even the middle of the field once it’s too dark out to see without a flashlight and even with the moonlight pouring down.

The more it happens, the more okay with it he is, the less surprised he ends up being, the more he craves for it to happen more.

☼

“Lucas!” Chenle from cabin 4 calls out to him from where he’s sitting in the field with Jisung.

Yukhei whips his head around and waves at the two of them. They’re cross legged in the middle of the grass. Chenle has his hand in the air and is waving it frantically in an attempt to lure Yukhei over. Of course, it works.

“What’s up little dudes,” Yukhei greets loudly. They are little dudes in the sense that Chenle and Jisung are kids, but physically, Jisung is expected to be at least Yukhei’s height in a few months. The thought of a giant 12 year old gives Yukhei the chills.

“Jisung has a question,” Chenle explains with a crooked smile. He turns to Jisung who looks absolutely exasperated.

“What? It’s your question! It’s Chenle’s question. What are you talking about?” the taller boy rambles as he switches from facing Yukhei to Chenle and back again. Chenle just laughs obnoxiously, hands slapping his knees, the ground and any other available smackable surface. Unfortunately, Jisung is in the splash zone.

“Ouch! Lele, just ask him already,” Jisung squeaks with every slap. Yukhei has already broken out into an amused grin watching the live Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Chenle gets his barings about him finally and continues.

“It’s our question, alright? We want to know about you and Haechan.”

The mere mention of their names in the same sentence makes Yukhei’s stomach drop all the way down to his toes. His fight or flight is kicking in, the room is spinning despite him being in the middle of an open field, and he’s sweating in places he usually doesn’t.

“Wh-what do you mean?” he stutters with a weak chuckle. This was _bad_ bad. Bad as in one of these boys probably saw them being indecent. _Kissing_? At a camp for preteens? Forget college, Yukhei was going straight to jail.

He reels everything back in his head, every place they’ve ever been alone together, and tries his darndest to find a place where they potentially could not have been alone at all.

Yukhei can only draw blanks.

“Are you two dating?”

And there it was. Yukhei kisses his job goodbye.

“Because me and Sung read this book about this boy who was really mean to this girl and it was because he liked her so much. That sounds like you two,” Chenle giggles into his hand. Jisung snickers beside him.

 _Huh_.

“That’s the only reason you think we’re together?” Yukhei questions aggressively, a stark contrast to the lighthearted teasing the boys are giving him. They look at one another, then back at him suspiciously. Yukhei forgets how intuitive kids can be.

“Yes?”

“No. No we aren’t dating.”

Chenle and Jisung both pout at him and tell him he’s a “big fat liar,” and warn that his “pants will soon catch fire!”

Somehow, saying those words out loud feels wrong to Yukhei. The fact that his words aren’t technically a lie makes him feel even worse.

☼

Despite being admittedly shit at origami, Yukhei very much enjoys arts and crafts. He likes the blissful distractibility of making something tiny and pretty with nothing but his hands and some cheap art supplies for an hour or two. Which is why he signs himself up to do friendship bracelets.

It’s another station similar to origami of which the kids are rather unenthused about it. He sits alone in a room until a handful of kids come in halfway through the time that all want to make bracelets for each other. 

They sit there for twenty minutes getting thread tangled in their uncoordinated fingers and give up. However, they tell Yukhei they’d be taking some supplies before they left, which he shrugs at and lets them go. He doesn’t expect them to come back twenty minutes later.

“Someone made this for you,” one of the boys tell him as they present him with a bracelet woven with all the colors of the rainbow. He stares at it before taking it.

“We were told that we had to make sure you wore it,” another one of the girls mentions. So he slips it onto his wrist and the kids scurry away giggling. Looking at the thing he can tell it was made fairly quickly, loose strands and knotted bits along the entire loop, but it’s rather cute.

When passing by him on his way back to his cabin, Yukhei finds an identical bracelet to his on Donghyuck’s wrist.

☼

Yukhei likes Donghyuck.

At least, he’s pretty damn sure he does—and he’s not sure about anything other than his soccer skills and his ability to inhale Hot Cheetos, but with all of the pushing each other into dark corners and kissing the absolute sanity out of one another to the out of sight handholding and gazing at one another from across a crowded room, it’s hard not to like somebody. Even more so if that somebody is as stunning and genuinely freeing to be around as Donghyuck. Yet despite how happy he is to be acting all lovey-dovey with the object of his affection, the way they only interact in secrecy like the giggly teenagers they admittedly are is starting to take a toll on him.

Yukhei is all love, and all play at the same time. Just as Yangyang once said, he is indeed “a big dog.” Dogs require affection, action and constant reassurance. The scary unknown of their labelless escapades is starting to give him anxiety, more anxiety than the thought of actually confronting Donghyuck. More than anything, he just wants answers to his questions, even if they’re not what he wants to hear.

Yukhei is one of the only counselors off any recreation station this evening. It’s a coincidence that Donghyuck is too.

He’s been wanting to address their _whatever_ for some time now—since the first time it happened, really. Although that had mostly been him just wanting to apologize for kissing Donghyuck without asking in the first place. Now the dilemma had morphed into something else entirely, something he never could have predicted in a million years.

Yukhei finds Donghyuck in the shared cabin, lounging on his own bunk. When he sees Yukhei walk in he brightens and practically leaps on him.

“Can we just ta-mmph!” Yukhei is interrupted by Donghyuck’s mouth. Any other time, it would be welcomed. He places his hands on Donghyuck’s shoulders and pulls him off.

“Hold on. We need to talk.” 

Donghyuck heaves a sigh, “About what?”

“This,” Yukhei deadpans, making vague motions between the two of them.

“This,” he starts, “is nothing,” he states as he climbs off Yukhei.

Truthfully, his statement strikes Yukhei right in the chest.

“I’m,” Yukhei draws out. “Not sure I’m following? What does that mean? Are we just kissing for the hell of it then? Are you using me?” It’s almost comical how frustrated Yukhei can get when it comes to Donghyuck and no one else, how fast he can start jumping to his own conclusions.

“No!” It’s almost comical how similarly Donghyuck is affected.

“Then please explain. Because I’m honestly a little lost.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” 

“So you’re using me.” 

Donghyuck groans.

He turns around suddenly and his eyes bore into Yukhei and then the world abruptly stops revolving.

“I like you.”

Yukhei gulps so hard he thinks he may get a sore throat later.

Despite knowing what kissing and the whole shabang of what they’ve been up to implies, but he hadn’t expected a confession, not from Donghyuck and not in a million years. Because throughout it all, Yukhei really had thought none of it really mattered, at least not to Donghyuck. He was just waiting to hear the words from his own mouth, and he had. Donghyuck had told him that their escapades held no meaning to him. But now he also liked him? His head was spinning. 

The confession even more unexpected when Yukhei starts thinking about why. Why does Donghyuck like a guy like him? What does he really have to offer the other boy other than shitty jokes and the unconditional reciprocation of his romantic feelings? Not much. Now he was self conscious.

Yukhei is torn between elation, confusion and anger at his confession. He wonders if he can get emotional whiplash.

“If you like me, why are you saying none of this matters?”

“Because I’m scared.” Donghyuck’s voice breaks and so does Yukhei’s heart when he sees the other boy looking so utterly distressed at their conversation. 

“Of what? Me?”

“Of us.” The answer is confusing to Yukhei, but he can’t pry any further. It’s apparent from his brief and infuriating answers that Donghyuck isn’t ready to open up to him, and this would have to be enough for today. He can wait. He’s been waiting.

“How can I… Is there any way I can help you not be?” 

Donghyuck runs a hand through his hair as he sighs.

“It’s really not you, Yukhei. I swear.”

Yukhei doesn’t believe him, but he forgets to tell him that he likes him too.

☼

If Donghyuck is avoiding him, he’s doing a spectacular job considering they reside in the same residence, work in the same vicinity and their cabins are right across the way from each other. The absence of the other boy’s antics puts quite a lot into perspective for Yukhei.

For one, he realizes he’s totally been played. He’s been Pavlov-ed. The introduction of a kiss every time he saw Donghyuck has conditioned him to want kisses. And now that he wasn’t getting them, he was going mad. Yukhei supposes Yangyang is right in calling him a big dog. 

For second, Yukhei has finally figured out how much he relies on Donghyuck for easy smiles and a safe place to be himself in. There was no one easier to talk to, no one better at empathizing with him and making him feel like a real person and not a glorified caretaker playing out a thankless job machine-like. Donghyuck was like an oasis of friendship and maybe love. He’ll get there. Right now, he’s just irritated at himself for realizing this so late.

It’s been approximately 21 hours since he’s had a proper interaction with Donghyuck. Sure, there’s seeing him across the field or in the dining hall, but kids are a great obstacle when avoiding confrontation about things that aren’t meant to be discussed around kids. It’s the first time Yukhei wishes he didn’t work in a summer camp. (A thought he almost immediately takes back.)

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Yukhei has no other option, really. And besides, there’s no way she doesn’t already have at least a clue of what’s been going on. High risk, high reward.

☼

Katy Kim is most often found getting her hair french braided outside her cabin by one of her campers, or teaching them about the importance of reducing the excessive use of fossil fuels and how that will affect the o-zone layer. 

Today she’s found in the dining hall doing the latter. There’s some time before lunch officially begins and Katy has her cabin sitting at a table listening intently to what the thinning o-zone can cause the sun to do to their youthful skin.

“That’s awful!” one of them squeaks. The rest let out a chorus of agreements. Yukhei slips into the conversation less than gracefully, stealing a chair and nearly missing the seat and landing on the ground, not to mention the loud screen of the leg against the flooring.

The group of girls all turn their heads to stare at him like a pack of owls.

“Hey, I um, need to borrow Katy real quick,” he explains before attempting eye communication with Katy, begging her for help. If there was any group of middle schoolers Yukhei was terrified of, it was the collective cabin 10. 

“If this is about what I think it’s about,” Katy starts once they’re outside behind the dining hall. “I’m about to owe Yangyang a large sum of money.”

“What? You know what—I don’t care. Donghyuck is avoiding me and I need your help to get him to, like, talk to me again,” Yukhei blurts out.

Katy fakes a gasp and lowers her voice. “You name dropped him!”

“Are you listening?”

She rolls her eyes at him.

“Yeah. Are _you_ listening? I have to give that meddling weasel forty bucks now!”

“Katy,” he pleads.

“Alright, jeez. I know you require my help. Everyone in this camp does whether they’re aware of it or not, but that’s besides the point.

“You need to corner him probably. He’s usually the first to go back to the cabins after lights out on Wednesday nights and then he goes straight to the bathroom for his skincare regimen. I’ll make sure you’re not bothered. You’re welcome. You know, you’re the one who should be giving me forty dollars.”

☼

Katy is scarily accurate when it comes to other people. 

Yukhei makes sure all of his kids have brushed their teeth and have been properly tucked into their bunks before he makes a mad dash to the bathrooms. 

Donghyuck stands in front of one of the only body length mirrors, standing as close as he can to it as he observes his every pore. 

“Donghyuck,” Yukhei says, startling him out of his skin. 

“God—wha?” he voices his confusion. There’s still a smear of moisturizer on his cheek unspread.

“We need to talk. Again,” he explains. Donghyuck groans and suddenly makes a mad dash toward the tiny space between Yukhei and the door. Yukhei stops him by sticking out and arm and catching him by his middle.

“But I hate talking,” he whines. Donghyuck wiggles himself free of Yukhei’s grasp and stands in front of him with his arms crossed like a child being scolded.

“I can’t believe you can say that with a straight face,” Yukhei remarks seriously.

Donghyuck laughs briefly before letting his arms fall to his sides. His expression turns serious.

“I just want to know something,” Yukhei continues. “I just want to know why we can’t be together. If you like me, I mean. Doesn’t that mean we should… I don’t know—be more than friends? Or whatever we were?”

“I don’t think so,” Donghyuck mutters, eyes flitting down to the wall behind Yukhei’s head and everywhere else to avoid direct contact.

“I’m sorry for being so pushy, but why not? Do you not like me after all?”

“I told you it wasn’t that, Yukhei.”

“Then explain. I just think as the other half of the situation, I deserve a little insight, don’t I? Is that fair?”

“I don’t really know how to explain.”

Yukhei frowns. “Is it like, commitment issues?”

“No. Maybe? I don’t know, Yukhei. Relationships to me—they’re just easier to control when they’re farther away.”

“What does that even mean, Donghyuck?”

“It means I’ve let people get too close and have it blow up in my face. It means I don’t know what you want from me, and it scares me.” Donghyuck blurts out before shrinking down.

Yukhei looks at Donghyuck and he sees someone he’s terrified to lose. Yukhei knows how it feels, to let someone see his vulnerabilities and have it go awry. He knows what it’s like to open up to someone and lose them. He thinks he understands him, at least to some lesser extent. There will always be a risk in a relationship, a risk of losing, of falling out, but Yukhei isn’t afraid. He won’t wait around anymore. Sometimes, there are risks he has to take.

He trusts Donghyuck. He takes a deep breath before he decides to pour his heart out.

“I want _you_ , Donghyuck. Call me selfish, but I want you and I want your smiles, your tears, your trauma, your laughter, your sorrows, your kisses, your stupid pretty face. I want your past and your present and your future. I want it all and everything in between. I like you Donghyuck. A lot.”

Donghyuck had listened to him intently, watching every saccharine word fall out of Yukhei’s mouth in awe. Donghyuck stands there in shock for a moment before breaking out into a crooked grin and huffing.

“You’re an entire idiot, Yukhei,” he says and Yukhei has never been happier to be insulted before.

“Does this mean you’ll finally be my boyfriend?” The expectancy in his voice is hardly concealed.

“If you insist,” Donghyuck sighs mockingly.

And they stand there staring at each other with their barely contained smiles because now they’re each other’s _boyfriends_ and Yukhei can’t believe how difficult, yet anticlimactic their conversation was. 

“You don’t have to bear all that alone, you know,” Yukhei finally says, and he knows Donghyuck knows what he means.

He can easily tell Donghyuck has never been told this before from the way his next exhale looks like he’s releasing all the tension he’s built up over the past seventeen years. 

Yukhei pulls him in by his shoulders and wraps his arms around him.

“I don’t know not how to,” he murmurs in Yukhei’s shoulder.

“Me neither, but we can figure it out together,” he promises because thinks he finally understands. Donghyuck is as scared of people coming too close and breaking him down as Yukhei is. 

“But I’m still scared.” 

“And that’s okay. I’ll be here for you. Always.”

☼

“There’s something you never told me,” Yukhei starts as he places packages of graham crackers into crates for snack time.

Him and Lip were assigned snack duty before Lip ran off, supposedly to assist a camper with gum getting stuck in their hair, which is strange considering gum is contraband and taken that first week of camp. Donghyuck had been volunteered to help in her place by Choerry.

Ever since they officially got together, the rest of the counselors have been more than obvious with pairing them together in every possible thing they could. Jokes on them because the two of them wouldn’t dare engage in PDA anywhere near Yangyang who is apparently still profiting off of their relationship. Although, Yukhei had brought up with Donghyuck that perhaps they could strike a business deal with Yangyang and take part of his cut. All it would take is a kiss goodbye at a staff meeting. Regardless, if Donghyuck had accepted, Yangyang had told him he could pry the bet money from his cold, dead hands.

Donghyuck makes a sound of acknowledgement, some kind of confused sound, as he sorts through a box of shiny red apples to pick out the ones that haven’t been bruised too severely.

“Why did you hate me before?”

Donghyuck groans gutturally. He halts his task to make an annoyed face at Yukhei.

“I did answer that, thank you very much.”

“No, I mean the pranks and all that. Why did you start doing them in the first place?”

It’s been in the back of Yukhei’s head for a long while. If Donghyuck really didn’t ever hate him with a fiery passion, what was the real intent behind the endless torment he faced for a summer and a half? Not that he holds any grudges—especially not about the one week Donghyuck made it so that every time he put on his socks, they were wet. How he had managed to do that, Yukhei hadn’t a clue.

“I… I’m kind of embarrassed about it now, but...”

That certainly throws Yukhei for a loop. He wasn’t sure if Donghyuck was capable of the human emotion of embarrassment or shame, at least when not inflicted on himself by himself.

“It’s because I was jealous.”

“Jealous? Of what?”

Donghyuck sorts another three apples before stopping and looking up at Yukhei who is already gazing at him in confusion.

“You know how I took over your cabin when I started?” Yukhei nods.

“They missed you a ton the first few weeks, even if you were still around. They kept mentioning you, and I don’t know, I hate being second best.”

Yukhei’s eyes are blown wide the entire time Donghyuck is confessing. 

“They adore you though. They have from the start.”

Yukhei has never known himself to be admired so deeply for something like his ability to get along with children. The thought of Donghyuck being jealous of how close he was to his previous cabin fills him up with pride. Had Donghyuck be jealous of him from the very beginning?

“Well, obviously. I just… you know, resented you for a good few weeks. That’s all. And I’m obviously over it now. So, water under the bridge.”

Yukhei finds himself laughing at how ridiculous the reason is. Donghyuck frowns at his reaction.

“Quit it, I was really sad that I wasn’t their favorite!” Donghyuck complains, but eventually finds himself smiling.

“No need to be sad anymore, love. You’ll always be my favorite.”

(“I don’t want to be _your_ favorite, I want to be Chenle’s favorite! You know he still prefers you?”)

☼

The summer is quickly drawing to a close. 

Although it is still achingly hot and the days are still 13 hours long, the air around the camp feels less and less humid by the day. The kids are all a little restless knowing their days together are dwindling down and the return to school is right around the corner. Yukhei dreads it most of all, just like he always has.

All of the seventh graders were spending their last precious moments of this camp together. Yukhei can see it in the way they’ve stopped bickering with each other in place of promises to find each other on Fortnite and Instagrams (which Yukhei knows they’re not technically old enough to have). The counselors have similar processes as well, exchanging Snapchats and making last minute plans to meet up before school officially started again. Even counselors who never usually interact are starting to make an effort to be around each other more.

On the fourth-to-last official day of camp (minus the day they spend cleaning the site and reflecting on the summer without the kiddos), Yukhei enters the dining hall through the back and gets a scolding as always, grabbing a carton of milk on the way out. There are wasabi-free muffins today, but just as he is about to grab a warm one, a hand slaps his own from the confection. 

“Taeyong is looking for you. Says he needs you in his office,” Lip relays to him monotonously. “And before you ask, I don’t know what it’s about, but he said it was urgent.”

Yukhei just tilts his head in confusion at her.

“Can I bring a muffin though?”

It’s the second time this summer that Yukhei is being called into the office. Just as the first time, he checks his temperature before entering. Fever-free.

He takes a grounding bite of his muffin and a gulp of milk before walking into the lion’s den.

“Lucas!” greets Taeyong gleefully. “I was expecting you.”

“I’ve been expected,” Yukhei snaps back. “What’s up boss-man?”

“I’ve been wanting to tell you something. It’s regarding your current employment status.”

Yukhei is almost scared of Taeyong in that moment—if anyone could even be scared of Taeyong. The air around them is filled with tension and it makes Yukhei fidget. He’s not a fidgeter. 

“What’s it you wanted to tell me?” he finally asks with his last shred of courage. The nerves kick in. 

He was so getting fired. 

Staff had probably somehow found out about him and Donghyuck being together and getting lost in the woods together. They probably knew they had broken into an old cabin and slept in it and didn’t finish setting up the thing they were supposed to set up until way past the time they were supposed to and had been kissing one another in secret—which is completely inappropriate—and _getting together_ —which is even more inappropriate(not really? but he feels absolutely awful about it—and now he was getting let go from the best thing that has ever happened to him.

Yukhei feels his eyes prick with the beginnings of tears before he sighs. He wonders if Donghyuck would be getting this talk too, or if he already had. He suddenly feels terrible. Well, at least they still had each other. He wouldn’t really call that _worth it_ , but he loved Donghyuck, he was sure of that much. Did he love Donghyuck more than his favorite place on Earth? Debatable. (But he would never tell Donghyuck that.)

Yukhei’s mind roams back to reality as Taeyong places a firm hand on his shoulder. It makes him shudder and he frowns. Here it was. He would never be coming back after this summer.

“We want to offer you a permanent position at ‘Yes! Today.’”

Yukhei’s mouth falls open and it doesn’t close until Taeyong’s excitedly nervous expression turns into one of nervous worry.

“So this isn’t about—what? Wait—really? Me?” he asks, his hands flying to his head in disbelief. Either he looks ridiculous or Taeyong really is joking with him because the man breaks out into a chuckle. 

“Really. You!”

He is not joking. So Yukhei must look ridiculous. 

Yukhei’s heart rate picks up immediately, thundering happily in his ribcage as he tries his best to contain the shrill threatening to escape his throat. 

Who is he kidding? 

He hollers in gratitude and lunges forward to envelope Taeyong in a hug that could rival a bear’s, chanting his “thank you’s” all while spinning the two of them in circles. Taeyong hugs him back, patting his shoulder awkwardly and non-affectionate-dad-like. 

“Hold on,” Taeyong says pulling away. “What did you think this was going to be about?”

“Nothing.”

After completely detaching himself from Taeyong, he is informed that they would be getting all the details sorted out once the summer was over. 

Slowly, Yukhei feels all of the jumbled puzzle pieces of his life falling together.

☼

Yukhei is watching the blue water ripple starting from where he wiggles his toes as the sun sets. Staff has finished with most of the cleaning of the site and he had been assigned with walking around the outer reaches of the site to try and find anything lost-and-found left behind by campers. There hadn’t been much; a blue jacket left on the benches and a few stray hair ties along the trails.

Now he sits on the damp wooden jetty leading into the lake, sandals beside him as he dips his feet into the cool water, probably getting a wet patch on his butt, but he could care less. He just wanted to bask in it all one last time.

It’s still a little hard for him to believe the summer was really coming to a close. It had been a long stretch, yet it had also whipped by so quickly. Not to mention how his life had been flipped completely upside down with everything that had happened. Just knowing he was going to be welcomed back to Yes! Today next year as a full time staff member filled him up to the brim with anticipation.

“What’cha grinning so big about all the way out here by yourself?” Donghyuck’s voice startles him so badly he swings his legs up and they fall back through the surface of the water with a slap, splashing water everywhere. 

“Jeez,” he sighs. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

Donghyuck’s brown hair is pushed back by a white sweatband. There’s still a glisten of sweat on his brow.

“Yeah, well. We finished up with bleaching the entire showerhouse and someone said you were out collecting lost-and-found. Figured you might want some company.”

Donghyuck takes his shoes off and sits beside him, pressing their shoulders together. He traces the surface of the cool water with his big toe. 

“Another summer down, huh?” Donghyuck says sounding wistful.

“See you next summer?” Yukhei offers with his hand extended for the other boy to shake. Donghyuck looks at him inquisitively before just grabbing his hand and intertwining their fingers. His palms are sticky and sitting so close to the other boy, he can still smell the bleach on him. The tips of his fingers are still wrinkly from scrubbing toilets. Somehow, every strange thing still feels perfect in that moment.

“Yeah, right. We’re gonna be spending all four seasons together from now on. You won’t be rid of me even if you wanted.”

The thought of that makes Yukhei smile.

“As if I would ever want that.”

**Author's Note:**

> boy, this has been the longest ride in my entire fic-writing history, but it is finally over and i am so relieved
> 
> this fic was seriously hard for me and i knew it was only because i needed so bad for it to be perfect—and it by no means is or ever will be—but stepping back and looking at the final product, im pleased!! i hope you all are too?
> 
> to my prompter, if you are reading this, i sincerely hope this is somewhat what you envisioned! it was so much fun writing this. as a camp counselor, i've always wanted to write a summer camp fic that screamed long, drowsy days and warm, stick-to-your-sheets nights and this fest was the push i needed to finally write one. (and one of my favorite ships, too!) i can't tell you how many times i've started a wip revolving a camp and scrapped it cause the vision for it just wasn't there. so thank you for inspiring me. i kinda went more ham than i usually do?
> 
> ps sorry i couldnt really squeeze in as much chenji as i would have liked ;;
> 
> thank you to everyone reading this!! it was my privilege and honor to have been a part of this fic fest! i hope you enjoyed my expansive (not) knowledge of child management!! 
> 
> please do leave a comment or kudos if you liked it!! you can also find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/renhyuks) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/guanhengs)!!


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